1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a printer, a control method of the printer, and a storage medium for panorama composing an input image from an image input apparatus such as a digital camera or the like and for panorama printing (for example, a width is the same as a standard size and a length is about twice as long as the standard size) the panorama composition image.
The invention also relates to an output apparatus, an output method, and a storage medium for displaying an image.
2. Related Background Art
Generally, an image of a digital camera has been written into a card-shaped storage medium (for example, a CF card or the like) comprising ordinarily a non-volatile semiconductor memory. Therefore, a thermal transfer printer which has slots for those memory cards and prints an input image has recently been proposed. Such a printer is being expected in the form of goods in which there is no need to connect to a personal computer and the user can easily enjoy photographs at home. On the other hand, for example, as disclosed in JP-A-9-93430, a method whereby two or more photographs of a certain scene are photographed by a digital camera so as to have a proper overlap area and are composed to obtain a panorama image has also been proposed. Hitherto, although there has already been proposed a method whereby the above processings are executed by the personal computer and a processed image is transferred to a printer, thereby obtaining a panorama print, there is not yet an example in which such a panorama composition processing is performed by the printer as mentioned above and a panorama image is outputted. If such a printer is realized, it is preferable because a powerful print can be easily formed at home.
However, usually, a plurality of images photographed in order to panorama compose and an image to observe by a single picture mixedly exist in a photographed image of a digital camera. The user needs to instruct the printer by some method to know which images are used to perform the panorama composition processing, so that the printer operation is complicated. Since such a printer operation is ordinarily executed while displaying selection items or instructions onto a monitor connected to the printer in accordance with an OSD (On Screen Display) method, the user feels a troublesomeness such that he has to prepare the monitor.
A memory of a large capacity is necessary for the panorama composition, resulting in a large increase in costs of the printer. For example, a case where a panorama image with an aspect ratio of 1:3 is composed from three images each consisting of 8 bits of RGB of (1024×768) pixels and is printed at a resolution of 300 dpi onto a paper with a size of (100×300) mm is now considered. For this purpose, as a print buffer memory, a memory capacity of (100/25.4×300/25.4×300×300×3)=9.8 MBytes is needed. Further, as a work memory upon panorama composition, a memory capacity of (1536×1024×3×3)=13.5 MBytes is needed.
Although the printer buffer memory is indispensable because it is used for a final print-out, the work memory can be also reduced because it is used to temporarily store intermediate data.
A method, therefore, is considered whereby panorama images are color area-sequentially composed and composed image data is printed, thereby performing a panorama composition in a work area corresponding to one color of a print color. Although the panorama composition processing can be performed by a limited memory by this method, since the same processing is repeated three times, a processing time increases. If the original image size is excessively large or the number of images to be composed is equal to or larger than 3, the memory capacity is also insufficient.
Further, a construction such that a residual capacity of a CF card is used as a work memory for the composition processing is also considered. When the residual capacity of the CF card is small, however, the above construction is not so effective.
Since the number of images which can be displayed on the monitor is small, to confirm the images with marks from a number of image data, there is only a method whereby the images which are sequentially displayed are scrolled and displayed on the monitor and are confirmed. This method takes a time and is very inconvenient.